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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:
Mr. Geoffrey Baer

Robert Baer was an amazing engineer with Pratt & Whitney engine company of East Hartford, Connecticut. He worked for them his entire working career, rising from parts department to President and CEO of United Aircraft International, a sales subsidiary of United Aircraft Corporation, now United Technologies.

He worked in the early years with everyone from Howard Hughes, to Bill Lear, to the utterly incomparable Kelly Johnson, of the equally-legendary Lockheed Skunk Works in Palmdale, CA.

At the peak of his engineering career, his projects included the awesome Blackbird engines -- the J-57s developed in utter secrecy in West Palm Beach, Florida. He also worked on the conversion of the JetStar from a utility transport for the Air Force to a Presidential transport. The JetStar also became the premier corporate aircraft in the first days of the business transport, a position it held for a decade. Forty years later, half of that fleet is still flying.

In his later career in sales, he made the largest export contract ever signed become a reality when he arranged for the Swedish engine contract (for $500 million, back in 1964) for the Viggen aircraft.

Especially in engineering, he was non pareil.